I will draw you in that landscape
by anenemies
Summary: At the beginning of the school year they would send out this letter and it would say things like "2 glue sticks, 4 packs of HB No.2 Pencils, 1 pack of markers  varying colors ".


_It's not that I am searching for you,  
I don't admit to such a fate,  
But I will place you in this close-up,  
I will draw you in that landscape_

At the beginning of the school year they would send out this letter and it would say things like "2 glue sticks, 4 packs of HB No.2 Pencils, 1 pack of markers (varying colors)". The children in the home may receive this list but it really made no difference. They were each assigned a single pack of pencils for the year and a store-brand spiral notebook. The rest was provided by the school or not at all.

Mr. and Mrs. Loman took Parker shopping for school supplies for the first time when she was twelve. They bought her markers that smelt like their colours and pencil crayons that had three shades of blue. She treasured these things even after they sent her back to the orphanage in the late winter, she was well aware she was a _difficult child_. When she had broken into the filing cabinets in Mrs. Larouche's office for practice the phrase had been emblazoned all over her file. It was strange how those words could make her feel so... ooky. Parker didn't hold much with the written word.

Pictures were different though.

When she attended St. Brigid Elementary, every Thursday they would have Library period. They would march, single file, alphabetical order, down the hallways to the library, pick a book each and then march back, _aboutface_, to the classroom and read for the rest of the period. Parker always cheated a bit during library period. Her book would have words but it would be about pictures.

It may say '_Vincent van Gogh, for whom color was the chief symbol of expression, was born in Groot-Zundert, Holland. The son of a pastor, brought up in a religious and cultured atmosphere, Vincent was highly emotional and lacked self-confidence._' But it was the lingering swirls and curls of colour that Parker read.

She would pour over these books, fingers tracing images so lightly, as though she thought she might rub away the magic if they pressed too heavily on the page. And later, in the limp light of her room – wherever she went there was always a night light, she absolutely _loathed _them – she would slip her cherished pencils and paper from her hiding places and she would try to make her own magic.

It was years later before she heard that an image of a person would capture some piece of their soul. Truly, she was aghast at the thought, her mind racing back to Colin, the Pratt's family dog; to that girl at the park with her pretty red hair; to _him_, looming and dark and crumpled under a bed in Mississippi. But she would linger over the portraits she would loose from their cages, at their soft smiles or soulful eyes, and think that it must be this soul that lent them such magic.

And perhaps she would hold a particular piece or two for longer than strictly necessary, revelling in the rare companionship offered by these strangers. And perhaps she might have sat at her desk, door closed, blinds pulled, and furtively sketched each of her new friends. Her hands lingering over this or that, smudging the lines around Nate's eyes or darkening the edges of Alec's hands or softening Sophie's mouth.

When Alec asked if she had ever drawn anything else, she thought nothing of it to shrug and say sure, to gesture blithely at her notebook on her desk. It was similarly inconsequential when he made a sort of enquiring gesture with his arms and she allowed him to gently flip through the images while Sophie, Nate and Eliot leaned nonchalantly over his head. But it was important, it seemed, that there was no portrait of Eliot. No one said anything but once Alec had flipped through book and closed the covers ever so gently (secretly this pleased Parker to no end), Eliot reached out and held the book himself and carefully, one by one, reviewed the images again.

It made Eliot sad. She thinks. She can't really be sure because she had been told her people skills weren't the best, but she thought that her Eliot skills might be better. And when she tried to explain, stuttering and tripping over the words, because those brittle, cutting things just didn't quite fit around the downy sensation of pencil and paper, he just nodded and was brusque and left the room.

That night when she sat down on her bed, she wished briefly for the orange stain of a night light.

That morning she tried again to explain.

"Did you know that if you draw someone you keep a bit of their soul?"

"If you photograph someone Parker, If you photograph someone you capture their soul ."

"Same thing. You can tell, you know. You can see it in some pictures."

"Yeah, I guess you can."

"I don't think you like cages."

"I don't in particular... Parker?"

"That's what I thought, you know, that you wouldn't like it. If you were _captured_. "

"Huh."

"Sorry."

"'Bout what?"

"It's not that you aren't the same as them, it's that you're _different_. I didn't mean it like that."

"I think I know that now darling."

When Eliot came into the office the next day there was a piece of paper from the printer with a horse sketched on it, caught mid-gallop in some vague, shadowy foreground. His neck was strained and there was foam around his mouth. But his mane was uncut and flew back in the wind and Eliot thought that nothing that looked so free could be caged.


End file.
